Pages

Friday, 30 January 2015

I was surprised to learn
recently that I have acquired a page of my own on the website RationalWiki (RW)
which prides itself, according to its subtitle, on ‘Cleaning up toxic waste
spills in the waterways of public discourse!’So if you are targeted by them you can assume that you fall in the
category of toxic waste.Putting aside
this unattractive image, what does their entry on me say (as it stood on 27
January 2015)?

It starts gently enough:
‘Tom Ruffles is a British paranormal writer and Communications Officer for the Society
for Psychical Research.’ The second half
is definitely true, while the first half is debatable as I have written about
quite a bit more than that, but I’m not
quibbling. Then there are some random
facts extracted from my entry on the SPR website’s trustees’ page, under the heading
‘Psychical Research’:

‘Ruffles
joined the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1987. He has co-designed the
current SPR logo. He has worked as a Book Reviews Editor and as their
Communications Officer. He was involved in the Anglia Paranormal Research Group
and has contributed to the Fortean Times. A firm believer in ghosts and the
paranormal, Ruffles is the author of the book Ghost Images: Cinema of the
Afterlife (2004).’

For good measure the
following is taken from the ‘Major activities’ section of my blog: ‘Ruffles currently manages the Society
for Psychical Research facebook page.’
As I wrote my SPR trustees’ entry I can vouch for the accuracy of RW’s
inelegant précis, with one glaring exception: my entry does not say that I am
‘a firm believer in ghosts and the paranormal’.
As we shall see, the anonymous RW contributor inferred that from links I
have posted on the SPR’s Facebook page.
I certainly wasn’t asked for my views.

So what have I done to
merit the attention of RW? My guess is
that it was because a number of the links I have posted on the SPR’s Facebook
page have been critical of Guerrilla Skeptics, an organisation with a similar
mind-set to RW’s, and because I wrote a sympathetic reviewfor the SPR website of a book by a bête noir of RW’s, Craig
Weiler's Psi Wars. My reason for thinking so is because at this point
the RW entry veers off into strange territory.
Under the heading ‘Conspiracy theories’ we find:

‘Ruffles has
re-blogged [referring to the SPR’s Facebook page] and supported the conspiracy
theories of Deepak Chopra, Craig Weiler and Rupert Sheldrake that materialists
and skeptics have highjacked Wikipedia to upload skeptical material on
paranormal-related articles.

‘Ruffles has
positively reviewed a conspiracy theory book written by paranormal blogger
Craig Weiler which incorrectly claimed that the Guerrilla Skepticism on
Wikipedia and related skeptic groups were ruining parapsychological Wikipedia
articles.’

To support the
contention that I have ‘re-blogged and supported’ said conspiracy theories
there are a number of links provided in the references to blog posts which I
had included on the SPR’s Facebook page.
The first is to a blog post by Weiler, ‘Chopra Vs. The Wikipedia
Trolls, er, Editors’; the second is to another Weiler blog post, ‘The Guerrilla
Skeptics: Taking Creepy to 11’ (you can see why they dislike this guy); the
third is to a post on another blog, ‘Rupert Sheldrake talks about "Guerrilla
Skeptics" (VIDEO)’; and the fourth is to a post by Robert McLuhan (an SPR
Council colleague), ‘Guerrilla Skeptics’, on his Paranormalia blog. I need
to make two points here.

Firstly, the reason I posted links to these specific items
on the SPR Facebook page is because at the time Susan Gerbic’s Guerrilla
Skeptics were making a lot of news, and I link to items that are topical. Secondly, I try to include as wide a range of
links as possible on the Facebook page, representing all shades of opinion. The SPR has no corporate views, and I do not
promote a ‘party line’.

This can be a difficult balancing act. I have been berated by both sceptics and psi
proponents for posting ‘rubbish’ – that is, material with which they personally
disagreed. I try to be neutral and
include anything that is relevant, and likely to be of interest to visitors to
the page. I don’t always succeed, but
the Facebook page (as well as the SPR’s Twitter feed, which RW ignored), have I
hope become lively sources of information and discussion in the field.

That the links I post cover a broad swathe is evidenced by
the fifth RW reference to posts which I have included on the SPR’s Facebook
page. The RW editor cannot have
scrutinised it carefully, assuming it was more criticism of the Guerrilla
Skeptics. Its title is
‘Guerrilla Skeptics create and update Wikipedia pages (including mine)’, but
this one was written by Jerry Coyne on his blog Why Evolution is True, and was extremely enthusiastic about the
Guerrilla Skeptics! Just because I link
to something on the SPR’s Facebook page does not mean that I am endorsing
Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake, Craig Weiler or Jerry Coyne.

What of Weiler’s book,
and my review of it? I tried to be
even-handed, noting where I thought he had gone too far, but broadly
sympathising with his contention that there was a conspiracy (and Gerbic has
referred to her ‘secret groups’ of editors, which sounds kind of like a
conspiracy) by opponents to manipulate Wikipedia pages to which they objected. Even if it the efforts are being conducted by
lone individuals, it is clear that there are concerted efforts to damage those
pages.

There has been an
attempt to distract attention from this manipulation by banging on that it is
wrong to say that the Guerrilla Skeptics had edited Rupert Sheldrake’s Wikipedia
page. Referring to my review of Psi Wars, the RW writer adds the following
comment in a footnote:

‘Ruffles
endorsed Weiler's conspiracy theory here [i.e. in my review of Psi Wars]. However, according to the skeptic Tim Farley,
“none of Susan's editors are editing that article [Sheldrake’s Wikipedia page].
It's completely a conspiracy theory” and also see refutation of the conspiracy
theory from the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia founder’.

Leaving aside the incoherence of that last part, I think
it is clear that the Guerrilla Skeptics have not edited Sheldrake’s page, and I
never said that they had in my review, so the RW reference to it is irrelevant,
but that does not mean there isn’t a widespread, systematic effort by
like-minded individuals, organised or not, to block sympathetic attempts to
edit pages they characterise as pseudoscience.
I have had first-hand experience of obstruction when trying to improve
the SPR’s Wikipedia page, and it is because of this type of difficulty that
there are efforts to by-pass Wikipedia and construct online encyclopaedias that
are not open to vandalism and contain reliable information. One of these is an initiative of the SPR.

Actually, I refer to
Guerrilla Skeptics once in my review of Psi
Wars, but not to any claim that they edited Sheldrake’s Wikipedia page. I said:

‘This
is all useful information but when Weiler is being particularly combative his
passion can run away with him: it isn’t helpful to say of the Guerrilla
Skeptics on Wikipedia that “much of what they do is fairly evil”, whatever one
thinks of their approach.’

It’s hardly a ringing
endorsement of Weiler’s position, yet the RW view is that because Weiler
thought the Guerrilla Skeptics had edited Sheldrake’s Wikipedia page, the only reasonable
act would have been to rubbish the whole of his book as the product of an unsound
conspiracy (that is, automatically untrustworthy) theorist. It’s a cheap tactic by any standards, lobbing
a red herring in to distract attention from the strengths of a critique. Another is focusing on Weiler’s day job as a
handyman, thereby implying that his views on psi and scepticism have no significance
– really, who cares whether he’s a handyman or not. It’s the points he makes that count, his
construction skills are irrelevant.

The error that the RW editor has made in trying to put
together a page on me is in assuming that writing about or linking to something
is the same as supporting it. It doesn’t
follow, but the assumption does indicate the impoverished world-view of RW. The website cherry-picks facts (notably
omitting any mention of my academic qualifications when giving a thumb-nail sketch of my activities because
they would bolster my credibility) to paint a particular picture, a stark
black-and-white one without nuance. It
is a case of either being explicitly with the RW programme, or being against it. There is no middle ground.

I put a link to my RW page on the SPR’s Facebook page, to
see what people thought. One person
noticed the cherry-picking, ignoring those Facebook links that are sceptical in
tone. Someone else thought that being
given a page on RW was a badge of honour, I suppose on the grounds that I must
be doing something right for them to notice.

I was a bit surprised to find myself on their radar and
wasn’t sure at first whether to be amused or irritated at the assumptions in
the RW entry, but on balance, now my initial surprise has worn off, it all
seems irrelevant. RW is for true
believers who are talking to themselves while the real (not pseudo-) sceptics
get on with the business of trying to take a scientific approach to the subject
matter in which they are interested, rather than dismissing it a priori because it doesn’t conform to
their own particular world-view.

Update 9 February 2015: On discovering
that I no longer have a RationalWiki entry

Ah, fame is fleeting. I have discovered that my RationalWiki page
has been deleted and the details combined with those of the Society for Psychical Research,
presumably on the grounds that I am not weighty enough to merit my own
entry. Strangely though I have a subheading
to myself, the only person with one. It
has the bizarre effect of making me look a more significant figure in the
Society’s history than say Sidgwick, Myers or Gurney, who are only mentioned in
passing. Despite this reworking there
are still unsupported assertions in my entry, despite the RW author having
actually read my 30 January post rebutting the original RW entry on me; I know
this because it is now listed in the references (with a link, thank you for
that).

The new version (as at
9 February 2015) still says that I am a firm believer in ghosts and the
paranormal and still has the bit about it being wrong to say that the Guerrilla
Skeptics edited Rupert Sheldrake’s page, when I have never said they did. There is a fresh charge: using this blog post
as a source it claims that ‘Ruffles has complained that RationalWiki described
Weiler as only a handyman, not a scientist’.
Someone is going to have to show me where I complained about that. I don’t think I have ever said that Weiler is
a scientist and should be described as such, all I said was that his day job is
irrelevant to the points he makes in his book.
Cavalier distortions like that indicate why RationalWiki is not a source
to be trusted.

The tendency to be able
to determine things without any evidence is demonstrated in the SPR entry as
well. Thus we read (as it also stood on
9 February 2015, these pages seem pretty dynamic) that:

‘The
SPR claims not to hold any corporate opinions on the paranormal as it's [sic]
members have a variety of beliefs or lack thereof about the reality and nature
of the phenomena studied; however by reading over the publications of the SPR
you can see that most of the members believe in the existence of the
paranormal.’

How could you tell that
merely by reading its publications, containing articles written by individuals
who may not be members, and who would in any case represent a small proportion
of the membership? To make such a charge
credible requires some kind of properly-conducted survey. It may be true, it may not, or more probably
its members, with a finer sense of discrimination than shown by the RW author,
have a range of opinions on a range of topics subsumed under that
umbrella. It’s not, to labour the
obvious, but a point which eludes the RW people, a monolithic subject towards
which one automatically takes a binary position, either believing in ‘the
paranormal’ or not.

Similarly:

‘The
SPR has had a number of skeptical members but this seems to have declined in
recent years. … Apart from a few skeptical members many members of the SPR seem
to be very gullible and fall into the trap of magical thinking about some of
the phenomena investigated, rejecting natural explanations for paranormal
ones.’

This is yet a further
unsupported assertion. On what basis has
the writer detected a decline in sceptical membership, and assessed the
attitudes of those benighted souls that remain?
Again you would need an independent survey to determine the range of
attitudes, but as far as I’m aware none has been conducted among the SPR’s
membership, and no evidence is supplied for the gullibility claim. If those they criticise made such sloppy
assertions, RW would be over them like a shot, and rightly. My guess is that RW is mainly run by
undergraduates with more zeal than knowledge, limited copy editing skills, and
a simplistic understanding of how people work.
But I would want to do some research to be sure before making a firm
pronouncement.

Overview

Over the last few years I have written a large number of pieces, mainly reviews on aspects of the paranormal and of visual culture, but many are no longer available. This blog format is a convenient way of putting my bibliography online and adding some of the old items, plus the occasional new one.

A Note on Titles of Publications

The British and Irish Skeptic is now The Skeptic

The Newsletter of the Society for Psychical Research became The Psi Researcher and then The Paranormal Review

Many of the later items are available online, notably those written for nthposition and the SPR website. Those for The Psi Researcher, Paranormal Review and SPR Journal are available in the SPR's online library; see http://www.spr.ac.uk/ for details.